A new lease of life has been breathed back into the iconic Grade II Listed Lighthouse building. Its raison d’etre is not known, but most historians agree it was probably built as an oyster bar (the Victorians version of a fast food outlet). Once used as the location for Harry Palmer’s (Michael Caine’s) office in the 1967 film ‘Billion Dollar Brain’. This exquisite Victorian folly has been mouldering away in plain sight for decades. Gradually over the years, the possibility of a bright future for this building was fading and it was placed on Historic England’s ‘At Risk’ register.
The Lighthouse posed a unique set of financial restraints to future developers:
- Its Listed status: any future development plans would first need to be agreed by the conservation officer, which could potentially prove costly
- Its location: situated over two underground tunnels meant that no additional weight could be added to the buildings footprint
- Cost recovery: costs of any future restoration would have to be recovered. This could only be achieved by increasing the amount of occupiable space
- Vibrations: the building was subject to continual vibrations which could be both felt and heard as a consequence of trains running directly underneath its foundations
- Noise: the busy roads surrounding the building, carrying huge volumes of traffic, added to noise pollution
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